Ain’t gonna matter in the end, really, but I like it just the same. I like it a LOT.

Vice President J.D. Vance
Vance is young, well-spoken, and willing and eager to criticize the many mistakes of his decadent predecessors.

Donald Trump has locked up the necessary delegates for the Republican presidential nomination, which means it’s time for every political junkie’s favorite quadrennial game: Veepstakes!

Every four years, commentators, political consultants, and elected officials all chime in with their takes on who a presidential candidate’s running mate should be. Perhaps the candidate ought to select a veep from a swing state. Perhaps the candidate ought to select someone who fits a certain demographic box. Maybe the candidate ought to pick someone with a very similar political philosophy—or perhaps someone whose ideological bona fides assuage any lingering concerns that party loyalists might harbor about the man at the top of the ticket. Or maybe it’s really as easy as picking someone who the presidential nominee simply likes and vibes with on a personal level.

There is no shortage of factors to consider. In 2024, the conversation really only pertains to former (and perhaps future) President Donald Trump; Democrats and their doddering Delawarean dolt at the top of the ticket, President Joe Biden, are stuck with cackler-in-chief Kamala Harris. Democrats are hemorrhaging minority voter support at breakneck pace, and they cannot afford to risk a greater exodus of Black voters by unceremoniously dumping a Black woman from their ticket.

Ultimately, the vice presidential pick should be selected by paying some consideration to the above factors, but above all, it is imperative to assess the contenders a little less robotically. We’re talking about human beings, after all. As dumbed down as it may seem, it is actually crucial to select someone who has the right “vibe”—or, to put it a little more technically, best captures the prevailing zeitgeist.

All of that is why Trump should select as his running mate the precocious freshman U.S. senator from Ohio, J.D. Vance.

I’m down with that; I like JD and think he’d be an excellent choice for VP, no matter who’s at the top of the ticket. Nonetheless, I repeat: won’t matter in the end. The Deep State will install whoever suits them as figurehead “pResident,” by hook or by crook, and that’s flat.

Or is it just possible I could be all wet here? Kevin Dolan says I might very well be.

They’re Going To Let Trump Win
We’re all bracing for craziness during the 2024 election. Nobody’s quite ready to give it a shape or a name to their expectations, but we have all agreed it will be “crazy”.

So let’s nail it down. Are you expecting a civil war? A “color revolution”? Another steal?

I suspect the reason we are all gesturing vaguely at “things getting spicy” is that none of the concrete theories for exactly how it will get spicy make much sense.

We’re just absolutely sure that he’s going to win the election fair-and-square, but “they’re not going to let him win”, so it must inevitably get “spicy” and “froggy” and “kinetic”, somehow.

But I actually think they’ll probably just let him win.

The 2020 election is another domain of folk political science where our guys are simply unwilling to admit any limitations whatsoever on the enemy’s power.

Most of the sane takes on the 2020 election don’t imply total control of the voting system. The election was “stolen” in the following ways:

• Changing rules governing mail-in ballots and expansion of deadlines made fraud harder to prove
• Democrat campaign workers went through nursing homes and housing projects gathering ballots and illegally filling them out for Biden
• News outlets and social media companies colluded with US intelligence services to suppress damaging stories about the Bidens and fabricate accusations against Trump

Many of you point to the brazenness of the intervention in 2020, and the stupidity of the justifications for it, as evidence of a kind of supreme Nietzschean self-confidence among our enemies.

I see the opposite…

If they could just add a zero to Biden’s vote count on the Dominion machine, all this scrambling and wriggling and lying would be unnecessary. They are showing you that their power has limits. There is a “margin of fraud”.

All of this talk about preparing for political violence and race riots is another case of conservatives gearing up to fight the last war. The enemy is good at creating chaos, but that won’t help them — their guy is in charge.

So they probably can’t beat Trump, and it doesn’t seem like they have the juice to try that hard.

The smart thing to do — which also happens to be the easiest thing for a massive faceless managerial state to do — is nothing.

Let Trump back in, and fight him on home turf — in the maze of the executive bureaucracy. Some of his backers have announced their intention to become politically competent in the event that he wins — but compared to the alternatives, that’s a very manageable risk.

More importantly: let Trump hold the bag for the all-but-guaranteed economic calamity of the next four years. The regime could skate for another decade if they succeed in pinning the collapse on a dangerous, erratic right-wing upstart.

Without necessarily agreeing in toto with the author’s conclusion, I will say the ideas presented here are damned intriguing, and certainly worth pondering. That said, I’m still stuck on Cynical, pretty much. Anybody the Überstadt deigns to allow into office as “pResident” will assuredly not be somebody you’d really want there—even if it’s Trump. Should Teh Donald somehow pull off a win in November against all odds, then to my mind that’s an indication of Swamp Critter (over?)confidence in being able to neuter, hogtie, and/or thwart him to their satisfaction.

Contra Dolan, I DO still interpret their actions as more indicative of confidence than of concern, although I will also freely admit that there’s no real reason why The Enemy couldn’t be in the grip of both at once. They aren’t mutually exclusive; in fact, more often than not confidence and fear are inextricably intertwined in the megalomaniacal mind, each driving the other to ever-greater heights of arrogance and paranoia. George III pops into mind right off as an example here, but there’s no shortage of others.

Which does NOT indicate that I’m convinced of TPTB’s invulnerability; their omnipotence; their unchallengable, everlasting hold on FederalGovCo power, forever and ever amen. Not a-tall. What I AM convinced of is that Real Americans will never dislodge Mordor On The Potomac’s multitudinous Grey Men without having to do so bodily, forcibly.

Which, in turn, is NOT cause for a mass throwing up of Real American hands in a paroxysm of despair, mind. There remain any number of methods by which federal overreach can and should be circumvented, defied, and undermined, if only for a comparatively brief while—methods both subtle and not-so-subtle, direct and indirect, bold and quietly humble. This is where state and local elections come in to show their ongoing importance and usefulness, although they’re only one among many others.

“Interesting times”? Oh, you betcher.